Stacey and Mrs. Latimer were having tea together. But, since Stacey had
ceased to visit the Latimer home, they were having it at the “Sign of
the Purple Parrot.”
This was a small but expensive tea-room recently opened on the fifth
floor of a building close to the river front, and Stacey, as he entered
it (for the first time), glanced swiftly about at its white walls, low
white ceiling, small-paned windows with hangings of purple-figured
cretonne, and at the purple wooden parrot on a tall standard in the
centre of the room. A silver vase containing a single yellow rose
decorated each of the ten or twelve little tables. Finally Stacey turned
in mute amazement to his companion, since it was she who had suggested
the place.
“They have very good tea,” she said, with an amused smile.
However, Miss Wilcox, proprietor of the tea-room, advanced toward them.
“I’m so glad you’ve come early, before any one else, Mrs. Latimer,” she
said, “because you can have one of the two tables out on the balcony.
I’m sure you’d like that. They’re always the first to go.”
And accordingly they went outside and sat down in wicker chairs beneath
a purple and white awning.
“Don’t you think it’s a nice idea,” asked Miss Wilcox, standing near
them, “to try and use our river esthetically, Captain Carroll? It _is_
Captain Carroll, isn’t it? I recognized you from your photograph. We’re
honored to have you come. It seems such a shame to have this magnificent
river and then use it solely for ugly business purposes. But that’s so
often true in America, I think. Saint Louis is the same way. I should so
like to have my modest little effort followed by others.”
Stacey said politely that he hoped it would be, and Miss Wilcox
presently moved away.
“You mustn’t mind her, poor thing!” Mrs. Latimer observed kindly. “She’s
devoted to her institution. It’s her child.”
“Preposterous virgin birth!” murmured Stacey, gazing down at the river.
It sweltered in the intense August sunlight. Barges and tugs moved up
and down its sallow waters, and vast warehouses flanked it. Across on
the further side was a train yard with multitudes of red freight cars,
idle or with engines shunting them about. Trucks and drays rattled over
the cobble stones of the streets leading down to the river (the strike
having been settled some weeks since), and shouts rose and the odor of
grease. And Stacey, turning away from it to order tea and scones from a
capped and aproned maid who had come to his side, looked at her as
though he did not believe in her.
“A movie world, Mrs. Latimer,” he remarked finally.
“Yes,” she said, “it is silly, isn’t it? This painted parrot, and the
tea roses, and the tiny, fussy, white-and-purple room, trying to make
itself noticed by that immense fierce reality out there! But it doesn’t
do any harm, and I thought the incongruity of it might amuse you. Where
has your sense of humor gone, Stacey? Once you would have laughed gaily
at this.”
“Where does a china tea-cup go in an earthquake?” he responded absently,
looking down again at the river, then back at the room. “No, of course
there’s no harm in it,” he said, after a moment, “since it is so
obviously absurd, but you might, I suppose, take it as a fantastic
caricature of something—”
But Miss Wilcox was seating people at the other table of the balcony.
“. . . so often true in America, I think,” she was saying. “I _should_
like to have my modest little effort followed by others.”
Mrs. Latimer smiled, but Stacey did not. He waited impassively until
Miss Wilcox had finished speaking and had walked away.
“Now in the movies,” he continued, “you are presented with standards of
behavior—sweetness and light, purity unsoiled, virtue triumphant, best
of all possible worlds—that have nothing to do with real life. Seems
impossible that real men and women could have posed for the pictures.
You’d think the contrast with the promiscuity of their actual California
divorce-court lives would be too strong. Not a bit of it! Well, that’s
all right—if people like that kind of thing. Personally, I think it’s
sickening. No matter how abominable real life is, I’d a thousand times
rather have to live in it than in a Pollyanna, Mary Pickford,
glad-and-tender world! Faugh!”
“So should I,” said Mrs. Latimer. “But if weary people find release in
such tawdry fairy-tales—”
“Sure! Let them! Nobody’s business! But there’s the trouble. The silly
stuff isn’t just taken as release. It gets accepted as truth. I mean to
say, the ideals and standards are taken as those of real people. How in
heaven’s name they can be by any member of a movie audience who knows
anything about himself, I swear I can’t imagine, but they are.”
“Ah, but that’s the point!” said Mrs. Latimer gently. “They don’t know
themselves. Even you don’t know yourself, Stacey.”
“I know enough about myself to see that I’m not like that. And what
results? That any glimpse of truth is condemned as rotten, abnormal,
pathological. For the movies are only a glowing example of a spirit that
corrupts everything. Why, if a novelist were to take any man alive—I
don’t say me, but somebody better—Jimmy Prout, for instance—and tell
the whole truth about him, the ghastly things he did and the ghastlier
ones he wanted to do but didn’t dare, what a row there’d be! The
reviewers would call the book abominable, the hero a hopeless rotter,
though every one of them has done or wanted to do things just as bad. A
movie world, Mrs. Latimer! No truth in it!”
“Yes,” she said, “no doubt. I’d like it different, honester. But what
harm does the pretence do? It even sets a standard of a sort, doesn’t
it?”
“What harm?” he cried. “Why, it makes people shocked at German
atrocities, as though they were sins committed by some alien inhuman
monsters. Down with Prussianism? As much as you like! I’m glad we beat
the Germans. So far, so good. But how about the Prussianism in
ourselves? A movie world! A smug, lying, movie world!”
“But there is kindliness in it, too,” she said wistfully, “and
generosity. I’ve met them both.”
“Yes,” Stacey assented somberly, “there is—in sudden impulses, more
frequent, I’ll even concede, than these passing gusts of bestiality.
But, so far as I can see, there’s only one real force, one motive, in
life, that stays on and on and never dies. Greed!” he concluded
fiercely.
Mrs. Latimer gazed at him for a moment in silence.
“And still you don’t see it all,” she said at last very gently. “You
won’t look deeply enough into yourself. If you did you’d see the
splendid spectacle of the human soul fighting all this that you
describe—and without quarter, dear Stacey, as long as you have breath
in you. Has your hatred of greed and lies no significance?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, drawing his hand across his forehead. “And I
don’t see that I’m doing any splendid fighting. I don’t know what to
fight. I merely fume impotently.” But the wild look of pain had
disappeared from his eyes.
He fell to wondering about his companion. No optimist, surely. Doubtful
of most things, but sweet and mellow in her skepticism. How had she
attained such serenity?
“You must know Catherine, my friend Philip Blair’s wife,” he said
suddenly. “You will like her, and she you. There’s truth in the hearts
of both of you, and yet you’re different, somehow.”
“When you do say pretty things, they’re pleasant to hear, Stacey,” Mrs.
Latimer replied, with a faint girlish blush, “because you seem not ever
to be saying them for effect.”
Soon they rose to go. Neither of them had so much as alluded to the fact
that Marian was to be married to Ames Price in a few weeks.
That same evening Stacey attended a meeting of the American Legion. His
life was like that now, inconsequential. He went pointlessly from one
unrelated fact to another.
Being in a far from constructive frame of mind, he had nothing against
the Legion and nothing in favor of it. It had indeed occurred to him
that if an organization founded on no common conviction, but on the mere
fact that its members had all been in the army, should come to exert
political influence, that influence would certainly be confusing and
might be harmful; on the contrary, if the young men who had been
soldiers wanted to play together, why not? But these were idle thoughts.
At heart he did not care one way or the other about the Legion. If he
had shown more interest he might perhaps, in view of his record, have
been elected commander of the post; but this is doubtful. He was a
wealthy son of a wealthy father, and class antagonisms were not absent
from the Legion.
Up to now he had attended only one meeting, but he had learned that
to-night a protest was to be presented against the engagement of Fritz
Kreisler to play in Vernon in the coming autumn; and Stacey, disgusted,
was out to see if there was anything he could do to head off such
nonsense.
It was a full meeting. There were several hundred men in the large hall
when Stacey entered, and tobacco smoke hung over them in a dull blue
mist. The commander of the post was already in the chair, and the
business of reading minutes was under way. Stacey dropped into a seat
and waited abstractedly.
He did not have long to wait. Excitement buzzed in a group near the
centre of the room, and a young captain sprang up. Stacey knew him by
sight. His unit was that to which Jimmy Prout had belonged. It had never
left Camp Grant.
“Mr. Commander and Comrades!” he began tensely. “You know what I want to
say. It’s about this business of letting an enemy come here and take our
money, just as if nothing had ever happened. You know who I mean. I mean
Kreisler. Kreisler was our enemy in the war. It doesn’t make any
difference that he didn’t happen to fight against Americans or that he
was out of it before we went in. He was on the wrong side. He supported
the side that did all the—the atrocities you know about. And what I
want to say is that if we’re asked to give him our support and our money
it’s an outrage. And so,” he added, unfolding a paper, “I propose the
following motion:
“We, the members of the John Harton Post of the American Legion, hereby
express our amazement and strong disapproval of the action of the
manager of the Park Street Theatre in engaging Fritz Kreisler, recently
a soldier in the Austrian army, to play at a concert in the city of
Vernon less than one year after the conclusion of a great war during
which thousands of American lives were sacrificed to defeat the very
principles that Herr Kreisler supported. And we hereby request the
manager of said theatre to cancel Herr Kreisler’s engagement, and notify
him that failure to do so will result in an attitude of marked
disinclination to patronize said theatre on the part of the members of
this post.”
And the young captain sat down amid applause, during which half a dozen
voices seconded the motion.
“Are there any remarks?” asked the chairman calmly.
Stacey was smiling a little at the contrast between the phraseology of
the introduction and that of the motion, but, half risen in his seat, he
was also looking about him keenly. It did not strike him that the
tensity was universal. There were sluggish centres of indifference in
the hall, and not many remarks were being made.
Presently he rose to his feet, obtained recognition, and made his way to
the front of the room amid some considerable interest.
“I quite agree with Captain Small,” he said, leaning against the
chairman’s desk, “that it doesn’t make any difference that Kreisler was
an Austrian instead of a German, and that the unit in which he fought
never faced an American unit. Aside from that, I disagree with him in
everything. It strikes me that for this post to pass any such motion as
that proposed would be silly. Kreisler fought against us? Well, what of
it? So did a lot of other good men. If we don’t admit that we depreciate
our own achievement. Gentlemen, I call to your attention the advice
given some months since by a newspaper in Rome. ‘There are a large
number of people sitting in a large number of offices, and especially
those who never saw service at the front,’ this paper said, ‘who ought
to be made to write: _The war is over! The war is over!_ twenty times a
day until they get the fact into their heads’.”
There was a murmur of laughter; but Captain Small was on his feet,
protesting angrily. “Mr. Commander!” he cried, “I object to the
insinuation that Captain Carroll has made—I mean to say, that I never
saw active service. If I didn’t it wasn’t my fault, and I—”
The chairman rapped with his gavel. “I am sure Captain Carroll intended
no such suggestion,” he observed. “Go on, Captain.”
“Certainly not,” said Stacey coolly. “It was through no fault of Captain
Small’s that he did not get to France. He was, I believe, one of the
first to volunteer upon America’s entry into the war. But, having made
that perfectly clear, and since the point has arisen, I call it to your
attention that both the proposer of this motion and those who seconded
it happen to be men who, though through no fault of their own, did not
see fighting.”
A rumble of voices interrupted him, but he waved his hand for silence.
“Wait a minute! Let me finish! I say this not to create dissension, but
because I want to show that I’m speaking not just for myself but for the
point of view of the men who had the luck—good or bad—to fight the
Germans in Flanders and the Argonne.”
He leaned forward and scrutinized the faces of the audience swiftly.
There was something compelling in his presence. Undoubtedly he dominated
the crowd, even against their will.
“You Franck!” he called sharply. “Are you against letting Kreisler
play?”
“N-naw!” stammered the man addressed, startled.
“And you, Davies? You, Markovitch? You, Einstein? Jones? Thorburtson?”
“No!”—“No!”—shakes of the head—negatives all.
“Bruce?”
“Jesus Christ! no, Captain! Let him play and—”
Laughter broke out tumultuously, and the chairman pounded with his
gavel.
“That’s all,” said Stacey, and sat down.
“I think,” said the commander, when silence had been partly restored,
“that it would be unfortunate to divide this organization up into those
who saw fighting and those who did not. We should stick together in
everything.” But his words were perfunctory. He had been severely
wounded at Les Eparges. “All in favor of the motion signify by saying
Aye. Opposed, No.”
The motion was lost.
Stacey had won. But he was under no illusions. He had won by force, and
he had made more enemies than friends. When he left the hall at the end
of the meeting he was a solitary figure at whom men looked from a
distance. He did not care. He preferred his solitude.
But outside, at the foot of the steps, Edwards, the commander, caught up
with him and limped off beside him. He was a mechanic and a student,
self-educated, and popular with labor. In high quarters he was solemnly
suspected of being a socialist.
“What you said was right enough, Carroll,” he observed meditatively.
“The trouble was with the way you said it. Too much outside. Too harsh
and scornful.”
“Quite true,” Stacey assented. “That happens to be the way I personally
am—harsh and scornful.”
Edwards shook his head. “You saw too much of it, I guess, Carroll,” he
remarked. “Four whole years, wasn’t it? God in heaven! And more mud than
we ever saw. Years more of mud! Filthy thing, the war, wasn’t it?”
Stacey laughed shortly. “Wait twenty years and see how people talk about
it,” he said. “Banners waving! Steel-capped heroes! Glory! Glory! We’ll
be talking that way, too.”
They walked on in silence.
“Oh, by the way, Edwards,” said Stacey suddenly, “you’re a labor man. I
wish to God you’d set me right about that strike business. The thing was
too silly the way it got into those rotten papers. I—”
Edwards was laughing quietly. “Pshaw!” he interrupted. “Do you think we
don’t know the facts? That’s one thing we do know. The boys aren’t down
on you. They’re not even down on Burnham now, though he did turn against
them. Can’t say that you’re personally popular—too harsh and scornful,
but you’re respected.”
“Well, that’s good,” said Stacey, with genuine relief.
“You ought to crawl through the needle’s eye and come in with us,”
Edwards added, after a moment. “I don’t believe you give a damn for your
money.”
“You do, though,—you labor people,” Stacey returned coldly. “You’re out
for all you can get, regardless. How do you expect me to take sides
either for or against you? Greed on one hand, greed on the other.
Everywhere.”
“Saw too much of it, Carroll,” Edwards repeated. “Years too much.
’Night. I turn down here.”